Posted
by
CowboyNeal
on Sunday April 02, 2006 @12:35PM
from the man-keeping-us-down dept.

Roberto writes "Gorgeous nerd Annalee Newitz hacked a political interpretation to recent vacuum cleaner cockfights at O'Reilly's ETech: 'Hollywood corporations have finally admitted that the real reason they built digital restriction management (DRM) software into PVRs and DVD players was to stop geeks from turning their recording devices into back-alley combat machines. You haven't seen ugly until you've watched what a DVD player without DRM can do to a TiVo.' Don't try to even think of this at home."

Why would someone even want to turn a DVD player into a battlebot? And even besides that, Why would makers care? If more DVD players get destroyed, that means more are bought. Why spend more money to make less?

A lot of people seem to be getting confused or thinking this is an April fools but to me it seemed pretty straight forward.

It was an exagerated story of geeks going mad with modifications in hardware in order to give sarcastic support towards DRM. Basically shes slagging off the companys for claiming to put DRM in to stop people doing dangerous terrifying things when in actual fact its just to make more money at the expense of normal consumers.

At least thats what I thought it ment. It seemed clear when I read it. After reading half of the comments here im beginning to think that maybe im completely wrong and in fact it was totally nonsensical waffle...

This article reminds me of German. You have a sentence and about 3/4 of the sentence is a build up to the end of the sentence. Sort of like saying "The answer is 2*34-28+2, 42", instead of saying, "The answer is 42". This is why I labor trying to read any German book!!

Like in many things, I suspect it's the negative stuff that gets noticed. That, and the fact that there are a HUGE number of immature geeks on slashdot. I'm not slamming the whole crowd here... but with this many people and anonymity you'll get a lot of gits turning up.I cringe at comments quite frequently, but there's just nothing to be done beyond grimace and stagger onward. In an anonymous online situation the chances are that if they said something dodgy in the first place they're not going to care if

No, they don't. In the absence of outside influence, one's rights are maintained. Even criminal law doesn't enforce *rights* - it imposes restrictions upon behavior for which there is no right.

Anyway, DRM doesn't preserve or enforce any rights. All it does is enforce restrictions that content producers have deemed desirable. Hence the phrase "digital restrictions management", untouched by the marketing wonks at the ??AA.

I'm not sure what you think you own. Good luck having a thought that has not been published in the last 100 years. RMS won't try to stop you from using the above phrase, but others will keep you from using equally common phrases and words. Then again, your view of what such an original thought entitles you to is skewed. Slaves frequently and paradoxicly side with their masters and direct the ire of their condition at their w

Hollywood doesn't want the words "fair use" to be uttered to their congresscritters, and they want to draw attention away from the Sony fiasco. This is just an evasive tactic to lend legitimacy to DRM.

AnalogDiehard doesn't want to read the article, and she wants to draw attention away from the fact. This is just a pre-canned comment with no relevence to the article as a tactic to lend legitimacy to her karma-whoring.

Do the Slashdot editors really feel that introducing a woman by a description of her (in this context irrelevant) physical looks is appropriate? (I say "woman" because I have a hard time imagining that Slashdot would introduce a male with a similar adjective: a case in point is that it was obviously a joke when they commended Linus Torvalds on his physical looks yesterday. If they were to do it in a non-joking manner, that would obviously be just as inappropriate as this.)

As was pointed out yesterday by several posters, this year's April Fool's was more than a little misogynistic in that it seemed to imply(obviously through exaggerations as Slashdot normally does on April Fool's) that women would like pink and ponies rather than technology news. I'm quite willing to let that slide, knowing that subtle humour is not really Slashdot's forte - but really, they shouldn't push their luck by describing female writers as being "gorgeous" the day afterwards.

(I do know that "political correctness" is largely frowned upon at Slashdot, but really, this isn't about submitting to some ever-changing and arbitrary standard, it's about basic politeness and showing respect for the people you are describing. You don't bring things like physical looks into the picture unless they are somehow relevant, and you certainly don't set different standards for what is relevant depending on the gender of the person being described.)

(Oh, and if anyone feels the need to argue that though "gorgeous" in this context obviously wouldn't be said about a male subject - given the gender of the Slashdot editors - it is a harmless one-word compliment which doesn't lastingly change the focus of the discussion: do note that there's already a thread contesting [slashdot.org] that Ms. Newitz is "gorgeous" based on a 120x130 grayscale picture in her profile. (Which in and of itself confirms some stereotypes about geeks.) Would there be such a thread debating this unless the submitter/editor had seen it fit to mention this in the introduction?)

Excuse me. Allow me to refer to this particular female, then, as Ugly Ms. Newitz. We wouldn't want to compliment a person just because they look attractive, now would we? Especially if the compliment couldn't, in good faith, be given to a guy. I'm sure nobody ever called Brad Pitt gorgeous, no sir! I shall make certain that all the Slashdot editors are sacked, and then sacked again.

Fair point. But if the editors do occasionally edit(though I do know that's in question), they did make a choice by leaving it in there. Furthermore, they accepted the story, so it's not unreasonable to say that they have a bit of editorial responsibility.

A backhanded compliment, implying that a woman's beauty is in any way relevant to the content of her writing. If you can't see why this is a putdown, then there's really no hope for the Slashdot demographic.

To be fair, it wasn't the slashdot editor but the story submitter that referred to the author in that way.

Likewise that introduction would be obviously inappropriate if the author's story was about an OpenSSH vulnerability or a commentary on the sad state of Windows Vista. In that case writing about physical appearances would be an irrelevant distraction which would imply judgement of factual nature of the article in question based upon the physical appearance of the person. Whether or not that judgement is positive isn't important.

But on a farcical story about cockfighting roombas that line isn't very clear. Can a comedian be demeaned by references to her appearance? Are they making less relevant a story that is already, at core, irrelevant? It again implies a degree of judgement, and a reminder of the prevalant nature of physical judgements in this culture. (I might add, the most insidiously judgemental people about women's appearances are largely other women)

I personally would have edited out the reference to her "gorgeousness." But the question remains... In a non-serious, non-professional context, is it OK to slip in an irrelevant compliment about someone looks?

Before the parade of guys comes in ripping on the parent poster, I wanted to make a small comment.I have a friend who is a former figure-skater and an otherwise knockout bombshell blonde. She's smart, witty, catty, and has legs that could stop an artillery shell. She also loves computers, and was working on finishing up a degree in Computer Science while working in IT.

That is, until all the geeks chased her out.

Asking her to crawl under a desk to fix a cable whenever she'd wear a skirt (never on the jeans

...and next you would like to ask that geeks would drop their fanboy attitude to various tech subjects:))To be fair, it is simple because geeks sees real life [tm] girls very rarerly. To learn how to talk with the girl, even is she is your work colegue, is very time consuming task. Too much time consuming. Don't expect standard geek spend time on this.

I learned several heavy lessons with all this. First, hardcore geeks won't get laid, period. It simply won't happen. So if you dig both - tech and girls - si

Not a thing you wrote rings true. "Other side of the business world"? I work both and there is no other side, just the same distribution of assholes. She wore short skirts working IT, knowing the physical work entailed? She worked IT just for Comp Sci geeks who chased her from the field? None of the narrative, what little there is, makes any sense. It's a bullshit moral fable on a topic which doesn't need artificial stories to justify itself.

Well, at our last company Christmas gathering we had a little get-together with a gift exchange (or rather, a gift lotto). It was mentioned that several women at our main office had been wishing that they could have more painting projects as apparently one of our painters had a rather nice butt.

They awarded him a little name plaque attesting to his nice-assedness at Chistmas. Now if the environment were totally PR, or likely if he were a woman, this would have caused problems. However, as a guy he blushed

"Asking her to crawl under a desk to fix a cable whenever she'd wear a skirt (never on the jeans days)"

She wore skirts when she knew that her job would sometimes entail climbing under a desk?!?!?!?! Your friend simply dressed inappropriatly for her job. She was a hypocrate for complaining. You were kidding right? She didn't really wear skirts to a job that required climbing under a desk did she?

I thought my (just-turned) 13 yo neice would get a kick out of Slashdot because of the OMG PONIES, she did. She now has it bookmarked because she liked reading the REAL articles. So, it's JUST as mysoginistic to think that women OR men, would NOT like Slashdot because of the colours and the OMG PONIES.

Well, while there are a goodly number of geek males that would qualify as acceptable. The range of ones that would qualify as gorgeous (to females, or gay males I suppose) are probably rather smallish. However, were there to be a geek of bodybuilder scale, I wouldn't mind at all if it were mentioned as many here seem to equate that brains and brawn must run opposite to each other (or in the case of females, brains and beauty).

In my books, it's always nice to see geeks who can qualify as both intelligent a

As was pointed out yesterday by several posters, this year's April Fool's was more than a little misogynistic [...]

You use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Mysogyny is an aversion or hatred of women. I have a six year old daughter, and believe me, the "PONIES" stuff was a pretty good (if way, way too obvious to be a prank) parody. But it doesn't signify mysogyny in any way.

Similarly, describing Ms. Newitz as "gorgeous" may be clumsy, insensitive and more than a little bit objectifying, but it's hardly mysogynistic. The overwhelming majority of single straight male slashdotters don't hate women, they just don't get them (in more ways than one).

In mentioning the attractiveness of Ms. Newitz, Slashdot isn't really breaking any ground here. She was named one of the top ten sexiest geeks of 2005 [tinynibbles.com] by multimediatrix and sex educator Violet Blue.

I'm sure she is lurking here and taking it all in stride. An accomplished journalist, she writes about techno-sexuality herself all the time--just take a look at some of her published pieces [techsploitation.com]:

In whose "wider society" are compliments or even crudeness looked down on? If anything, the submitter demonstrated that he's more 'normal' than the average Slashdotter, in being able to casually refer to a woman's physical beauty.

Fuck you, you elitist snob. (I imagine we're freaks for getting pissed off at those who insult us too, right?)

Crudeness is many times defined by being something that is socially unacceptable. So, when I read your above statement ( "In whose "wider society" are compliments or even crudeness looked down on?"), I get really confused.

Cause this sure as hell is not "news" of any kind. Mod me down if you want but this was a waste of fucking time to read. Decently hot chick or not, the article was bogus as hell. Who gives a rats ass about this? Sure fighting robots is cool, but some half assed non-true tagline that is full of shit is not cool in the least.

Is it a slow Sunday or what? Is this the best that's come into the old Inbox today?

I have absolutely no idea what that article was about. Whenever I thought something insightful was about to be said I was disappointed. Can someone actually tell me what that article was about (if anything)? Was it meant to be a joke article? What was the point of it?

It's a joke, until you consider the raft of mod chipping cases from the DMCA and similar stupid laws. The AIBO [wikipedia.org] case is most pertinent. Sony gave up because the cease and desist notices were bad for business. The law was and is on their side. I'm too fed up with the mean spirited crackers and gougers portrayed to be more than mildly amused by the joke and think the topic is too important to be made light of like that.

If you can't make a computer do what you want, you don't really own it. As computers b

Thought it might just be me, but the summary seemed almost incomprehensible to me...... I think I get the gist of it, but the phrasing seemed to be so awkward that it was almost impossible to figure out.

Every day there's a new "real reason" for DRM. There is one reason which always seems true no matter what the daily fad is. DVD players are $40 because you can download DVD players for free. Blu-Ray players are $1800 because you can't download Blu-Ray players for free.

Dude! This chick just made a joke about Ubuntu *and* Gentoo users in the same sentence and then went on to disparage Red Hat users. I don't know what bug is up your nether regions, but I for one am in love. (She also discusses "USB devices." *drool*)

Yeah, thats fine and all, and she's probably a real cool chick and has a great personality, but gorgeous describes physical attractiveness, and honestly, it would take MANY free (as in beer) beers for me to consider her gorgeous.

It's not her fault (she didn't say she was gorgeous, some random guy did), but IMO people can be held accountable for their beauty.For example, people say I'm articulate, have a solid sense of humor and am pretty good with computers. If anyone said I'm "handsome" I'd immediately shoot them down because I'm not. I wouldn't want people to even remotely consider that part of my attribute list, because people meeting me would inevitably be disappointed.

Obligatory references to the caricature of the desperate slashdot audience aside, the blatant sexism of refering to this intelligent, witty and inspiring woman as "gorgeous" almost counters that of tagging every article on the front page as "gay" in the sense of a general derogatory term.

While I have to agree with everyone who has posted that she doesn't strike me as particularly ravishing, I'm more annoyed with the fact that the submitter has to make any comment at all about her looks. I don't recall any submitted stories that began "Handsome hunk hacker Joe Blow has an article about...". While I'm used to people in the outside world thinking about looks first and substance second, I'm dismayed to find that seems to hold true for slashdot as well.

There's a nearly identical post elsewhere in this thread claiming the opposite, that the comment proves that Slashdotters are inferior to the rest of the world, as opposed to sinking to their level.

How about accepting that Slashdot is owned, operated and participated by human beings. All human beings can individually and momentarily be lewd, cruel, rude, selfish, and many other things. Not every one of these moments is 'telling' or 'a sign' or 'typical'.

Well, I'm a woman and the first thought that went through my mind was "funny how they criticize her looks but don't mention their own". In my experience, guys are quick to shoot down a woman's looks regardless of how good-looking they're not themselves. Frankly, if some pudgy, out-of-shape geek criticizes my looks I can easily fix that problem... with a fork.

But yeah, the fact that there were comments about her looks made me roll her eyes. I've read articles that had pics of the guy in question and never once made a comment on his looks. Perhaps I will in the future - why shouldn't I?

Disclaimer: I've just been to a site where 90% of the files to download weren't available because "this entry is not approved". So I'm a bit irritated anyway.

1) you don't see the body2) the photo is BW3) the photo is small4) the photo is crappy5) there are people that appear not so good in photo but they are pretty in real life.6) and most important, a girl can be gorgeous in her ideas and behavior, and you evaluate more and more this point of view as you get older.

All you can really tell from the picture is that she's not ugly. As a sometimes photographer, I'd say that they're not particularly flattering pictures.

I've seen people go from drab to sexy with just a change of clothes. These webcam images say that there's a good bit of room for potential. I definitely not expect a date with her to be drab.

.... and a freaking school photo! How many hot babes do you know that have ID pictures that make them look like complete blobs? Besides. Intelligence counts for alot, and she seems to be missing nothing there. we can work on the rest later.

7) Pictures on-line may be hours, days, months or years old and people's appearance will change. Her techsploitation info page has her looking either slightly butch [techsploitation.com] or anime (you gotta have blue hair...) [techsploitation.com].

So, basically, unless looking at her turns you to stone, let the original poster have his humble opinion and, if you want to disagree, that's fine, but let's not turn this into a discussion over whether this woman is hot or not. There's a website for explicitly for made for that discussion [hotornot.com] if you're into t